A joint study recently released by Syracuse University and the Nielsen Corporation reports that nearly 22 percent of Golf Channel viewers have almost reached the end of their lives and are now simply waiting to die.
“Based on the demographics, we knew many viewers would be past their prime and waiting to kick the bucket, but this was a lot more than we expected,” said Cynthia Walker, an associate professor at Syracuse University’s Department of Media Studies.
Walker’s study, which combined clinical psychology test statistics with demographic information of over 50,000 television-viewing families, showed that about one-fifth of viewers felt that their lives had “gone on too long” and were “ready for it all to end.”
“In our research, we found that the Golf Channel is most commonly viewed passively at awkward family gatherings, hospitals, or in sports bars when there aren’t any actual sports on,” continued Walker. “Among these three core viewer bases, we found that a sizable portion of viewers are apathetic at best about their own existence, and would be perfectly fine with getting it all over with.”
While NBC, Golf Channel’s parent company, declined to comment, one Golf Channel executive said he was “surprised, but not necessarily discouraged” by the findings.
“In an increasingly broad universe of television content, it’s important that a specialty channel like ours can have a certain amount of niche appeal,” said Director of Programming Mack Ruschky. “We always try to develop programming to attract a younger, more dynamic audience, but we’re just glad our core audience has chosen to bide whatever remaining time they have left on Earth with us.
